American Notes ATLANTA

When civil rights activists commemorated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday last year with a march in predominantly white Forsyth County, Ga., the Ku Klux Klan turned up to provide harassment and abuse. Fifty of the demonstrators, represented by attorney Morris Dees of the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, sued the Klan on grounds of conspiracy to violate the marchers' right to free expression. In Atlanta last week, U.S. district judge Charles Moye unsealed the verdict: Klan and Klansmen owe the marchers $950,400 in damages. It was the second wallop of a verdict against the K.K.K. lately. In a case also handled by Dees, an Alabama jury last year awarded $7 million to the late Beulah Mae Donald, whose son Michael was lynched in 1981. Jubilant last week, Dees nevertheless insisted he believes "the Klan has a right to exist," if not to harass. Adds Dees: "This is not just an attempt to put the Klan out of business." Maybe not, but at this pace, he is not going to leave them with the price of a sheet.